Saw Casablanca and Dressed to Kill this week. Couldn't even finish the latter though. Casablanca was alright, I guess.

Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:17 pm

Annihislater

Storm Trooper

Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2011 9:18 pmPosts: 13084Location: Leigh

Re: Film Thread VI

I saw Cold War earlier this week, and I can't stop thinking about it.

It starts out with a group obtaining field recordings of slavic folk songs, but then slowly becomes about a relationship between two people. It's almost like a series of fleeting moments over the course of a few decades, as we dip in and out of a dysfunctional relationship. I can't quite pin it don and say X, Y and Z make it good, it just seems to do lot of little things that resonate with me.

Let's see if I can keep this up for the whole month.One horror/horror related film each day for October.

DAY 1.

THE NIGHT STALKER(1972)

As I was already showing signs of interest in horror based movies and TV shows around the age of ten, my mother reacted by (briefly) trying to stop me from watching anything and everything of that nature. And so, because of this annoying reactionary stance, Kolchak - The Night Stalker was one of the films/TV series I never got to see. I remember adverts for it on television making it look tremendously scary (shut up, I was ten), so obviously the answer was a resounding and sulk-inducing “no!”. What made this decision so utterly intolerable was the fact that when the time came for it to be shown, I was put very firmly to bed but could hear both of my parents watching it themselves.

Starring Darren McGavin as intrepid investigative journalist/photographer Carl Kolchak, the movie which spawned a short-lived TV series (more on that soon) is about a vampire stalking his victims under the bright neon lights of Las Vegas. A fairly silly prospect anyway, but the daft story is handled very well under all its obvious constraints. McGavin is excellent as the overenthusiastic reporter, and his terminally stressed boss, Tony Vincenzo, is played to great comic effect by Simon Oakland (Psycho, West Side Story).

With McGavin narrating the story at every turn, the film doesn't have to work very hard at presenting its plot or its intentions. The daytime shots – regardless of what they are - are all pretty much standard 1970s cop procedural stuff, but the night scenes are occasionally quite creepy and atmospheric. The bickering and arguing between Kolchak, his boss, the chief of police, his girlfriend, and well, everybody else in the whole film, can get a little grating, but as the whole thing only lasts for seventy-five minutes then it's all fairly forgivable. Being a TV film, there's virtually no blood or gore, but there are some nice shots of ladies dancing in seedy little nightclubs, wearing very little in the way of clothing. 3 Fists

With The Night Stalker becoming a surprise hit, ABC immediately launched into writing a sequel. Changing the writer, but not wanting to change anything else that would lose them viewers, the producers basically retold the exact same story, but in a different city and with a slightly different villain. The bad guy this time is a man who awakens every twenty-one years to concoct an elixir from the blood of some really bad actresses, enabling him to live forever.

Relocating to Seattle, Kolchak is given a new girlfriend to shout at while his former editor, Tony Vincenzo, conveniently turns up in the Emerald City to cause more shouty comical friction. This time, however, and largely due to the film's extended running time, the arguments between Kolchak and everybody with a speaking part just seem to go on forever.

Another run-in with another Police Chief, another argument with his sassy girlfriend, and just like the first film - another cover-up. Flopping along like a disabled frog, the film struggles to do anything of any consequence right until the final act when Kolchak comes up against his seemingly immortal nemesis (played by Richard Anderson – soon to be better known as Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man).

Crackling and fizzing in a way than almost none of the previous seventy-five managed, those last fifteen minutes are very well executed, and with special appearances by Al Lewis (Grandpa Munster from The Munsters), Margaret Hamilton (The Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz), and John Carradine (The Howling, an absolute shitload of stuff from the '60s and '70s) those fun moments make the otherwise disappointing Richard (I Am Legend, The Twilight Zone) Matheson penned sequel just about worthwhile.2 Fists

Not a film today, but an entire horror TV series.So, carrying on from the two Kolchak TV films, I give you...

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER - THE SERIES

Due to the success of the first film and the relative success of its follow-up, it didn't take ABC long to commission a full series. A decision which worked at first, but due to constant clashes between star, Darren McGavin and his producers – plus a lawsuit from the show's creator - ultimately caused the whole thing to implode and leave the air after just twenty episodes.

Acting as a “monster of the week” format, first story The Ripper plays exactly like a third, much shorter, pilot movie but seems to go on forever until the more enjoyable last fifteen minutes. However, watching second episode The Zombie is like watching another show entirely. All of a sudden, there are jokes and one-liners being thrown around, and the actual story (a zombie being used by a voodoo priestess to kill off members of a mob syndicate) takes almost a complete back seat to the show's new found comical side.

X-Files creator, Chris Carter, has always cited Kolchak as a huge influence, and with They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be..., a story about aliens and government conspiracies, it's easy to see why. Also, the story about an invisible killer alien which can only be tracked by its heat signature because it uses a different spectrum of light, isn't exactly a million miles away from Predator.

With William Daniels (the voice of KITT from Knight Rider) playing the latest in a revolving door of authority figures written purely to butt heads with Kolchak, The Vampire is a dark, but pretty sluggish episode about a sexy female bloodsucker who could possibly be linked to the original movie. But we never really find out. Set on a cruise ship, The Werewolf could be the horror prequel to The Love Boat as Kolchak comes up against even more authority figures (the ship's captain and crew this time), and a man in a grey suit and a furry rubber mask. Wittily scripted and fast paced, this one is definitely one of the show's better entries. Another episode to influence at least two separate X-Files episodes, Firefall is about the ghost of a gangster trying to take over the body of a famous orchestra conductor, while Kolchak's fear of going to sleep in case a supernatural force kills him is more than reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

With each passing episode yet another influence rears its head, and this time we have The Devil's Platform, a neat little story about a politician (Tom Skerritt from Alien) and his meteoric rise to power. As his enemies are killed in mysterious "accidents" while he remains safely guarded by a demonic rottweiler, this episode has The Omen, and Omen III: The Final Conflict written all over it. 'Bad Medicine' stars Richard Kiel (Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker) as a native American ghost coyote, and is a painfully dull episode which trots out every single one of the show's usual chestnuts simply to fill out time. Sounding more like an episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Spanish Moss Murders is a story about a creature (played by Richard Kiel again) created by dream deprivation, and could possibly have helped inspire Wes Craven to write both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Swamp Thing. A reasonable episode lifted by appearances from Elisabeth Brooks (The Howling), and Keenan Wynn (Piranha, Herbie Rides Again).

Off-screen arguments between McGavin and his producers leak painfully into show as the next few episodes fall into tedious formula territory. From the beginning, the formula has always been there, but with these stories, all the good ideas seem to have dried up. The best of these is probably Mr R.I.N.G., a reasonable attempt at an AI robot story, but the only memorable things about raging ape episode Primal Scream are the appearances from Jamie Farr (Klinger from MASH), the guy from The Godfather who wakes up next to a horse's head, and some quite terrible monkey-man make up. The Energy Eater is mostly terrible, and not even Phil Silvers (Sgt. Bilko) can save Horror in the Heights from the fast forward button.

The quality improves a little with the mostly good, but occasionally supremely stupid The Trevi Collection, an episode about witches in the fashion industry. Featuring a writing team of a young Robert Zemeckis (director of the Back to the Future trilogy) and Bob Gale (writer of the Back to the Future trilogy), Chopper is a story about a headless biker who cuts the heads off his old motorcycle club members. What might have been a scary hour of TV for the 1970s doesn't really have the same effect these days, especially when the headless avenger is clearly a stunt biker covered in an oversized leather jacket, his body at least twice the size it should be. Still, one of the funniest scripts in the whole series, and an amusing turn from Art Metrano (the hapless Lt. Mauser from Police Academy 2 & 3) lifts this one above many of the others.

Demon in Lace is a fairly humdrum affair about a succubus inhabiting the body of recently dead teenage girls. A decent episode, but for some reason, Kolchak adopts a very old fashioned attitude to women and feels totally out of character. There's an early appearance from Andrew Prine (V, Grizzly, The Lords of Salem), and a welcome return for authority figure of the week, Keenan Wynn (now with his more familiar, and hugely impressive moustache). Stand-up comedian Jackie Vernon stumbles horifically over his lines, but there's a fun appearance from a virtually unrecognisable Carolyn Jones (Morticia from The Addams Family) to help get over that.

Legacy of Terror is about Aztec sacrifice, stars Erik Estrada (Ponch from CHIPS), and Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard) sporting a ridiculously posh English accent, and features a truly terrible ending which involves Kolchak falling very slowly down a flight of steps and rubbing his knee. Going full Scooby-Doo, the pun-tastic The Knightly Murders is about a haunted suit of armour, and for the second episode in a row, Kolchak escapes by falling slowly down a flight of stairs. The Youth Killer is an enjoyable story about a woman who runs a matchmaking agency, remaining young by sacrificing her clients to Greek gods, but series finale The Sentry is apocalyptically awful in every way imaginable. Featuring Tom Bosley (Mr Cunningham from Happy Days), the monster of the week is a man in a really poor, almost panto-like rubber crocodile suit. Remember Croc from Rod Hull kids show Emu's World? Like that, but less realistic. Too rubbish to be even camp or kitsch, just a terrible and painfully unworthy way for the show to go out.

Watching TV from the '70s now compared to the way modern programmes are presented is actually quite confusing. These days, even the most episodic of shows feature at least some type of character development or continuing story threads, but there's nothing like that at all in Kolchak. Every episode is essentially the same story with a slightly different spin. Bypassing every opportunity to refer back to a previous story, even for just a brief one-liner, the same thing happens in the same way - to varying degrees of competence - each week, and with the exception of the last three or four episodes where Kolchak speaks his regular closing monologue into the camera, breaking the fourth wall (something which really doesn't feel right), the show is basically identical from the first episode to the last. A good show, but thankfully The X-Files eventually came along and did it properly.

This, by far and away is the single most terrifying question posed in trippy horror nightmare 'Mandy'. The film actually raises many, many other questions but this is the one that stands above all others.The first hour of Mandy will either have you admiring the director's artistic flair and unique sense of style or will have you reaching for the remote control to see what time the football starts. Patience is necessary during the first half of the film. Lots of patience. The story is simple. It's 1983 for some reason and Nicolas Cage lives with his wife, the titular Mandy - the love of his life - in a nice big cabin in the woods. They spend their time gazing at the sky while doused in slowly pulsing flashes of bright blue, green, and pink light filters and generally loving each other in a slow moving hippy trippy way.

A satanic cult rolls into the area and their mad-as-a-badger leader, Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache, son of Coronation Street's Ken Barlow himself, William Roache) takes a shine to the lovely-ish Mandy (Andrea Riseborough from Waco, Birdman, and The Death of Stalin). Taking Mandy prisoner while keeping hubby Nicolas Cage strung up with barbed wire, Sand tries using mind-altering drugs to make her compliant before trying to seduce her with his sexual wiles*. Laughing at his less than impressive old fella doesn't sit well with Sand and he kills her in a sleeping bag.Now, bearing in mind it's taken a whole hour to get this far – lovey couple get attacked by satanists – there's only one thing left for the film to do.

UNLEASH THE MIGHTY CAGE.

From the moment Nicolas Cage frees himself from his barbed wire prison, showering his wounds in whisky and screaming like only Nicolas Cage can do, the film is relentless. From slow moving hippy arthouse to complete mayhem, this film goes 0-Cage in 60 minutes and simply doesn't stop. Collecting a sexy looking crossbow from Bill (Predator) Duke, and forging a sexy axe, Cage hunts down the demonic creatures responsible for his wife's death, despatching them as brutally and violently as possible.

Two words: chainsaw fight.

Fuck yeah.

Forget plot. There is none. Just revel in the madness of Nicolas Cage as he shrieks, screams, roars, gibbers and howls at the screen for an hour. You know that Youtube montage video “Nicolas Cage Losing His shit”? They're going to have to re-edit it. The moment he turns his blood-soaked face to the camera and grins like an idiot, I guarantee - whether you're laughing with him or laughing at him; whether you're laughing at how brilliant that moment is or how utterly fucking stupid it is - you will laugh.

Don't expect it to make any sense. It doesn't. It's like Nicolas Winding Refn and Rob Zombie made John Wick Goes To Hell** while taking downers and LSD until the coke kicked in. It's all about art design and appearance. And yes, that 100% means style over substance, but when Nicolas Cage gets his mental on, who really gives a fuck? The scene where Roache stares unblinkingly, almost hypnotically, into the camera for over two minutes, his face merging with Riseborough's is fantastic. In fact, it's eyes that dominate the entire film. No matter who is on the screen, you are always, and sometimes quite cleverly, drawn towards their eyes. Apart from Cage. He's just fucking bonkers all over.

Director Panos Cosmatos (son of George P Cosmatos – director of Stallone action classics Rambo: First Blood Part 2, and Cobra), while clearly out of his fragile little mind, also shows a level of creativity that promises much for the future with arguably the Marmite release of the year. 4 Fists

*He flashes his willy at her.**Not an actual film, but wouldn't that be fucking great?

_________________

Fri Oct 05, 2018 12:23 pm

Triggmartyr

Star Trooper

Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:51 pmPosts: 4557

Re: Film Thread VI

Venom.

Not as bad as the critics reckon. Tom Hardy is Eddie Brock/Venom and has to bring down a dodgy scientist. It manages to tell the Venom origin story without mentioning Spiderman quite well. Some decent action scenes and a good performance from Hardy (where you can actually make out what he says this time), although the rest of the cast aren't so good. The guy who played the leader of The Mayans motorcycle gang in Sons Of Anarchy shows up for a small role. The film does tend to get itself in a muddle over whether it wants to be either a serious movie or a comedy, but it does both of those things well IMO so I suppose it's ok. There are supposed to be plans for a franchise and even a Spiderman cross-over, but I doubt they'll go ahead if this film doesn't make enough bank. It's not the best MCU movie but it's not the worst either.

Four Fists.

PS: Shame Jack Kirby died years ago, we could have had a cameo of him in these movies seeing as he did most of the work that Stan Lee took credit for.

Opening with a disclaimer similar to the one which accompanied the trailer to director Herschell Gordon Lewis's 1963 original, the opening couple of minutes to this appalling attempt at a remake is pretty much the best things ever get.

Relocating the story to Paris for some reason, the plot remains almost the same as the original with diner owner Fuad Ramses (Robert Rusler from A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2) under the influence of Egyptian (Sumerian in actuality) goddess, Ishtar, appeasing her with blood sacrifices by hacking his way through a bunch of terrible, terrible actors.

The difference this time is that Ramses has a wife (Caroline Williams from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2) and a teenage daughter (played by a thirty-seven year old actress probably best known for her appearance in a Blink-182 music video). Appallingly acted and generally awful, the only highlights are the pleasing amounts of nudity, some of the gore, and a brief, and most welcome appearance by Herschell Gordon Lewis himself.

The first hour is so slow that everything virtually comes to a stop, but it does feature one utterly majestic moment of Joey Tribbiani “smell the fart” acting from Rusler. The rest of the film, however, just sort of mopes along, occasionally aided by some bouncy bits and hearty splashes of blood. The final scenes are quite good, featuring lots of gore and some decent effects for a minute or two, before the whole thing ends so abruptly you think you've missed something.

Based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story, this Roger Corman produced film desperately tries to hearken back to the glory days of his earlier Poe adaptations like House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and of course, the sumptuous looking The Masque of the Red Death. Unfortunately, without having anything close to that kind of budget to spend, The Haunting of Morella all looks rather cheap, with wobbly sets and wobblier attempts at acting.

Set in the nineteenth century, the film opens with the execution of a witch (the titular Morella) while her husband and baby daughter watch from the trees. Seventeen years later and the daughter, Lenora, is now the spitting image of her late mother, and on the eve of her eighteenth birthday the dead witch decides it's time to take possession of her daughter's body so she can live again. Meanwhile, Lenora's milfy governess does what she can to help by killing sexy ladies to feed the dried-up, glowy-eyed corpse of her mistress kept in the somewhat Lovecraftian looking family mausoleum.

Highlights include one of the soggiest sex scenes to ever take place in a bed, the startling revelation that string-pull bikini bottoms were actually invented in the 1800s, and a miscast David McCallum (The Man From UNCLE) stumbling blindly around, falling over his lines as well as the furniture, while managing to combine boredom, confusion and embarrassment simultaneously. Oh, and lesbians.

Little more than an excuse for casual nudity and wet boobs, The Haunting of Morella is as close to softcore porn than it is to horror. Granted, there are some reasonably bloody moments as throats get cut and eyes are put out, but let's face it - most viewers (well, the male ones at least) will come for the blood but stay for the boobs.2 Fists

Oh, and yes, Six Feet Under did steal the artwork for one of their albums.

If you've never heard of Fred Olen Ray, then the chances are you've never heard of classic straight to video movies such as Bikini Hoe-Down, Bikini Drive-In, Ghost in a Teeny Bikini, The Bikini Escort Company, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party, and of course, the legendary Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

Every bit a Fred Olen Ray movie, Evil Toons (a misnomer in itself as there is actually only one toon in the whole film) is filled with exactly what you would imagine. Tits. Tits, tits, more tits, and some blood. Fred Olen Ray likes tits.

Four girls wearing skimpy clothes and sexy underwear get changed into skimpier nightdresses and sexier underwear when they turn up at an empty old house to make it ready for the new occupants. Unfortunately, there's a mysterious looking trunk in the cellar which contains a wobbly looking knife and a bargain basement, speaking version of the Necronomicon. It doesn't take a genius to realise straight away that no good will come of this.

Inside the Necronomicon are crudely sketched drawings of monsters and demons, and when the girls read aloud the incantation which they are explicitly warned not to read aloud, a badly animated dog-monster thing leaps out of the pages and, then later, into the body of one of the girls ('80s/'90s hardcore porn star Madison Stone) while she's in the middle of slowly putting on a sexy outfit for some reason.

Clearly without a budget to keep the animation going (the cartoon dog monster gets all of about two minutes actual screen time), the film falls back onto the age old money saving trick of getting the monster to take human form. That way, the rest of the effects budget gets to go on nothing more than a splash or two of blood and a set of over-sized gnashers for the raven haired porn star to wear.

After munching on the neck of her visiting boyfriend, and killing business owner (Dick Miller from Gremlins, and The Howling), the constantly semi-naked Stone chases the other scantily clad, and extremely bouncy girls around the house for next forty minutes or so, killing them one at a time by jumping on them, while gratuitously, but quite wonderfully, tearing off all their clothes. The day is saved when the final girl, Megan (porn and B-movie actress Monique Gabrielle), is helped by a friendly but dead David Carradine in a big hat and a bad, grey wig.

Everything, including the film stock (“short ends” taken from the reels of other films) is cheap and unbelievably tacky, but is also great fun. Especially if you like tits. The completely pointless but completely brilliant scenes where Stone strips naked to bad pop music, and where Gabrielle goes upstairs to fondle herself for no apparent reason are special moments of directorial genius, and it's just a shame that we didn't see the other two actresses (especially porn star Barbara Dare) do much more of the same. In fact, the distracting intrusion of the story is completely unnecessary when you think about it.2 Fists

Every time I do one of these 31 Days... things, I always end up finding and settling on one certain genre or theme for a few days. I've done cannibals, slashers, sci-fi, all kinds of stuff. Well this year, for some reason that theme seems to be softcore horror porn. Having started yesterday with the extremely unclothed 'Evil Toons', I swiftly rearranged myself and moved onto another old “classic” I never got around to watching first time around.

At only 75 minutes in length, and even with more exposed female flesh than thought possible for such a low budget, the majority of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers doesn't manage to live up to its wonderfully shit title. The acting falls firmly into “so bad it's not funny, my head actually hurts watching this” territory, the script really does sound like it's being made up as it goes along, and considering Fred Olen Ray had directed 15 features before this, he still wasn't even close to being a good director. And with over 150 titles to his name now, he still isn't.

If you have a film that literally pulsates and throbs with bouncing boobs, exposed nipples, and overgrown hairygardens and you still find your interest slumping, then you must be doing something wrong. Even some glorious overacting by Gunnar (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) Hansen wearing some equally glorious eyeliner can't stop the inevitable finger hovering over the fast forward button. It's quite lucky then, that the last twenty minutes are so utterly tremendous that they actually save the whole film.

Naked fire-eating, Gunnar Hansen in a shiny black robe, Michelle Bauer almost wearing a sexy red dress, a naked and body-painted Linnea Quigley, a naked chainsaw dance, and a naked chainsaw fight make the last part of the film a different experience entirely. The first hour might only be held together by a few splashes and squirts of red food colouring, and some rubber body parts and tits, but the remainder is really quite wonderful.

I take it back, Mr Olen Ray. You fucking genius, you.3 Fists

_________________

Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:05 pm

Stat_Rad

Storm Trooper

Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:23 pmPosts: 21606

Re: Film Thread VI

Heaven's Gate: One of the most beautiful American films ever made, and one of the all time greats of the 80s. Yes the script has problems and some of the acting is cheeks, but the sense of world building is incredible and totally transportive. 8.5/10

I'm Gunna Get You Sucker: Amusing in its day, but not now. 4/10

Highlander: watched 40 mins before realising something that has been on the tip of my tongue for decades: Highlander is shit. Yes it's a good idea, but it was never done well. The first is the best though, which isn't saying much.

Solo: OK, but that's it. Just kind of plods along with no real standout moments. Passes the time. 5/10

_________________

Last edited by Stat_Rad on Tue Oct 09, 2018 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Along with Fred Olen Ray, Roger Corman, and Jim Wynorski, David DeCoteau is one of the most prolific directors in B-Movie Land. With an unbelievable 458 directorial credits between the four of them, DeCoteau is responsible for 103 of those himself, the unfeasibly lengthy list including such awe-inspiring titles as Creepozoids, Dreamaniac, Puppet Master III, Beach Babes From Beyond, Revenge of the Babes, and of course, the seminal Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.

Nightmare Sisters, while not one of his greatest achievements, is still 80 minutes of stupid, no budget fun about a succubus that possesses the bodies of three nerdy girls with bad hair and buck teeth (the not at all nerdy Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer), turning them into sexy bimbo sluts from hell, eager to suck on the life force of their equally nerdy male dates.

Three jock types follow the nerds to the sorority house, and one by one get picked off themselves instead. The girls soon get down to business with their mouths and tongues before the unfortunate jocks explode into a pile of ash, their souls devoured by the demonic entity.

A bargain basement priest turns up along with some bargain basement effects and some seriously bargain basement acting. We also get a song from Quigley, included only to promote her short-lived punk band, The Skirts, before the whole thing ends happily ever after with the demon exorcised. Happily, the girls remain their sexy selves instead of returning to their former looks and celebrate with a nice wholesome game of Twister.

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot.There are tits everywhere.

From the moment the girls get possessed, Quigley, Brinks, and Bauer are either naked, naked and wet, or naked, soapy and wet. There's a bath scene which goes on for nearly ten minutes, and as the girls trick their victims, they get to wear sexy bikinis and skimpy costumes, while at one point Bauer shows what she can do with a banana and no gag reflex.

Even for director Fred Olen Ray (here going under the name 'Bill Carson'), Scream Queen Hot Tub Party is a bit of an anomaly. A sort of fake documentary with tits, SQHTP looks like it may have actually begun life as a genuine movie, but ended up as this due to lack of interest and/or money.

Filmed entirely on home video, Olen Ray's “film” manages to possess an even sleazier than usual feel to it, looking more like a hardcore porn production than anything else. And with five very sexy young ladies spending most of their time getting naked, wearing skimpy swimsuits, or soaping themselves down, you could be forgiven for thinking it might turn into something a little more adult at some point.

It doesn't though. In fact, for such an obviously sleazy idea, the finished article somehow manages to come across as unexpectedly innocent. Even the script is surprisingly intuitive in places, occasionally coming across as meta decades before meta became a thing.Basically, what we have is five actual “scream queens” playing themselves - Brinke Stevens (Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity), Monique Gabrielle (Evil Toons), Kelli Maroney (Chopping Mall), Michelle Bauer (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers), and Roxanne Kernohan (Critters 2). After arriving at a house at the invitation of a mysterious Dr Orloc, the girls simply decide to get naked and into a hot tub before turning the film into a pseudo-documentary, explaining the do's and don'ts of showering, bathing, and generally being naked in horror movie situations.

This entails a good hour of the seventy-one minute running time becoming a clip show using lengthy, and predictably lathery, sequences lifted from the likes of Slumber Party Massacre 2, Transylvania Twist, Sorority House Massacre II, and (the yet to be released) Evil Toons.

The acting requirements are minimal, there's no story whatsoever, and if you take out the movie clips, all you're left with is twenty minutes of sexy girls soaping each other down in a hot tub.Er.. why am I saying that like it's a bad thing?2 Fists

A walloping great Saint Bernard called Cujo chases a rabbit into a bat cave, but instead of the nocturnal inhabitants being all cool and darkly gothic about it by turning him into Batdog, one of fluttery little bastards bites him on the nose, giving him a nasty case of rabies instead.

Over the next few days, Cujo is slowly driven mad by the disease, foaming at the mouth and dribbling worse than a teething one year old. The dog's owner, a mechanic called Joe Camber (Ed Lauter from Youngblood and Death Wish 3), doesn't notice anything is wrong with the slobbering hound at first and packs his family off on holiday so he can get some quality drinking done. Dee Wallace (E.T.) and her young son bring their temperamental family car to the Camber's farm to be repaired, but Cujo, having recently snacked on his owner and his best friend, isn't too happy about that. Wallace's car inevitably dies, her son begins to dehydrate in the scorching heat, and the monster dog tries to smash, bite and claw its way in.

Much like the Stephen king source material, the first half of Cujo takes a while to really go anywhere. It sets itself up with a lawsuit story and an adultery subplot, neither of which are massively important for a film which, although it wants to be a commentary on dysfunctional families, is basically just a story about a demented dog. There are some nice touches in the first half though. The opening scene where Wallace's son runs to his bed in slow motion, hoping to avoid the invisible monster from his imagination, is done superbly, as is the scene where an out of sorts Cujo materialises from thick fog.

However, the second half of the film, right from when Wallace rolls up in her car with her son in tow, is a totally different beast. The tension is ratcheted up by the minute as Wallace becomes increasingly desperate to escape her stranded, besieged vehicle and save her wilting son. The lumbering canine provides both shadowy menace and visceral threat, while also managing to overcome the most common problem horror film directors encounter while using a real animal - actually looking scary when it's needed the most.

A combination of muddy fur, wet and dry drool/foam, and a blood-caked snout make Cujo look every bit as scary as a dog that size could, and more. Yet at the same time there are many moments when you still empathise with the unlucky animal. This dichotomy only lasts until the last ten to fifteen minutes though, because when Cujo finally hits full rampage mode, you really want the big barky fucker dead.

Anyone who has read the book will probably be disappointed with the "nice" ending the film has to offer, but if you want horrible Stephen King related endings then go and watch The Mist instead.4 Fists

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 7 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum